The Final Solution
Recommended Reading by Andria Regan
The Final Solution
Michael Chabon
(Fourth Estate)
Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This means nothing to me, however, in a world where Hilary Swank wins an Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry, and then follows it up with The Core…
Chabon’s follow-up, The Final Solution, reads a hiccup past 130 pages, and yet I feel I deserve the credit of having read something comparable to the 1,000 pages of Lonesome Dove, or even the first chapter of the Bible. His thoughts are massive and his language gigantic. He describes around his subjects, making them recognizable only because we know the shape of all their surroundings; he sidesteps the assumptions associated with “mystery,” and more appropriately names his work, “a story of detection.”
The Final Solution begins with a young, mute German refugee boy wandering the open lands of Sussex in 1944. His only companion is a parrot named Bruno whose song is a repetition of numbers. Next, and in no particular order: deception, murder, loss of faith, kidnapping, espionage, redemption and peace. The story begins guns a-blazin’, wrought with intrigue, and as with nearly all fantastic beginnings, there is no feasible way the finale can live up to the grandness of endless possibility. What makes the story live up to its own standard is the characters’ pure appeal and the degree of involvement Chabon requires of his readers. There is no skimming here; no assuming anything. You must absorb yourself in this book and enjoy the detection that every sentence demands from you. There is an entirely different world living in the head of Michael Chabon-one that he generously shares, and that I definitely want to be a part of.
My only regret in starting this book-as is the case with all great books-is that it eventually had to come to an end.